How Miso Came to Mainstream American Diets

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Miso soup is the original instant soup. Not Cup Noodles, not cans of tomato soup, not those packets of dried Thai noodle soups.If you’ve got some miso paste in your refrigerator, miso soup can be as quick and easy to make as any pre-packaged soup. Toss in some rice, veggies, and maybe some protein, or try noodles and tofu and mushrooms, and you’ve got an instant, satisfying, and healthful meal. I started with some precooked brown rice, tofu, and avocado, but pretty soon was experimenting with other combinations. Miso soup was my gateway into more adventurous cooking for one. It felt like I had begun to feed myself like a grown-up.

Five years later, I still turn to my original miso-avocado-tofu combination when I’m running low on time or inspiration. When I’m throwing a dinner party and suddenly worry I haven’t made quite enough food, I often pull together a fast miso soup using garlic, tomato paste, miso, and maybe some tofu. Miso is a good thing to stock in your refrigerator, and, these days, it’s not hard to find. Whether in your local grocery store, natural foods store, or Asian grocery, you can usually find miso. In fact, you’re more likely to be overwhelmed by the options than have difficulty tracking it down.

This was not always the case. Until the 1960s, most Americans were not familiar with miso. Even today, though there is widespread familiarity with miso soup on Japanese menus, most of us don’t know the history of this ancient ingredient or much about the many varieties we might see available.

So, without further ado, a miso primer–the story of what miso is and how it became (almost) as popular with Americans as instant ramen.

First, the basics. Miso is made from fermented soybean. The process is generally started by mixing soybeans with a cultured grain (most commonly rice or barley). The cultured grain, known as a koji, is made by inculcating the grain with the mold aspergillus oryzae. The soybeans are mixed with the koji, water, and salt and then allowed to ferment for anywhere from a couple of months to three years. Miso is thus a living food like yogurt and many cheeses.

People have been making miso in Asia since ancient times. The practice is believed to have originated in China, where fermented soybeans are known as jiang. In the 700s, the fermentation practice spread to Japan. Centuries went by. Then, Japanese immigrants brought miso-making to the United States in the early 20th century. The first miso company in the U.S. opened in Sacramento in 1907. Over the next 15 years, four more miso companies opened, all in California and all founded by Japanese immigrants. These companies seem to have produced miso mainly for the tightly knit Japanese immigrant community and did not sell to a broader audience. It was not until the 1960s that Caucasian Americans began to try out the product.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Americans discovered natural foods (along with environmentalism, folk music, and the sexual revolution). This is when miso came into the consciousness of Caucasian Americans. It was the macrobiotic food movement that gave miso its first push into Caucasian American’s consciousness, according to John Belleme, one of the authors of The Miso Book.

In particular, a Japanese immigrant Michio Kushi began to train people in macrobiotic eating. Consuming miso was central to this diet, because of miso’s many purported health properties.